


That Most Important Thing

by tacomuerte



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 15:34:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20194591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacomuerte/pseuds/tacomuerte
Summary: On Harry's last day, he keeps what's most important to him close to his heart.





	That Most Important Thing

And someone leads the beast in on its chain  
But I know you're thinking of me ‘cause it's just about to rain  
So I won't be afraid of anything ever again

— _John Darnelle, “1 John 4:16”_

* * *

Harry Potter paused just inside the edge of the Forbidden Forest where light and shadow bled into one another, finding himself gripped by the strangest urge to laugh at how properly melodramatic the scene was. 

It was not, he thought, the appropriate reaction when walking to one’s death, no matter how necessary it was to eliminate the last, unintentional horcrux, Harry himself.

He blew out a sigh and turned to look back at the castle he had come to think of as home one last time. His resolve hadn’t faltered. The knowledge that Ginny was up there and only Harry’s sacrifice could give her any chance of surviving chased away any doubts he might have.

Not for the first time in the past few minutes, Harry wished that Professor Dumbledore were here. Of course, Harry had come to learn over the past couple of years that the wizard he had idolized was just as capable of mistakes as anyone else, but he was until the day he died, a comfort to Harry.

_What would the headmaster say?_ he wondered.

Harry allowed the faintest smile to play across his face. No doubt Dumbledore would have made some cryptic comment about Harry’s choice to stand in the half-light of the forest, on the edge of two worlds. Or perhaps he would have placed a comforting hand on Harry’s shoulder and said something touching about how much he admired Harry’s bravery.

_That would be fitting_, Harry thought. Of course, the old man would have just as likely made some mystifying, nonsensical comment about a Muggle sweet he was fond of.

That, Harry decided, was the most likely scenario. It would have taken his mind off the terrible thing he was about to do, and Harry desperately needed that right now.

As he stood watching smoke from the damaged castle rise into the air before fading to nothing, Harry felt now at the end of his very short life that he understood Albus Dumbledore more than he ever had. Though he might not have shown his true feelings, at heart he would have mourned the pointlessness of it all.

All that damage… all those lives lost… all for one man’s cowardice.

Such a waste.

Harry noted that he didn’t have much time before Voldemort’s sick deadline came to pass, yet he could not make himself turn away just yet from this one last view he would have of Hogwarts. Up there in the great hall of the castle, Ginny mourned her dead brother, unaware her boyfriend… _ex_-boyfriend, Harry forcibly reminded himself… was marching to his death.

He wanted so badly to have told her, but he wouldn’t have been able to do what he had to do if he’d heard her voice, felt her soft touch on his hand, seen the pain and grief in her eyes.

What he was doing was unfair. She should have the chance to say whatever she needed to say to him, and he hadn’t given her that. Would she have forgiven him? Would she still understand he had left her behind because a world without her wasn’t worth saving?

He had almost gone to her regardless, but she deserved the chance to mourn Fred along with her family without thinking about the boy who hadn’t had the courage to stay with her. 

Was it wrong of him to think only of her now, at the end? Was it wrong that the faces of the dead blurred in his mind when hers was so clear?

Perhaps, but it didn’t matter. She was the sole focus of his thoughts now.

Harry hoped the dead might forgive him. He hoped that Ginny might some day learn the truth, although he wasn’t sure how. Harry hadn’t shared Snape’s memory with anyone. Though Hermione might have—no, almost definitely had—figured it out.

Holding on to that small idea gave him the strength to turn away from the castle. It would have to be enough. It was all he had now.

Harry ventured deeper into shadow. Finally, he came to a still, quiet spot where he could no longer see the sky above, nor smell the acrid stench of death surrounding Hogwarts.

Pulling the snitch from his pocket, Harry regarded it for a long moment. He suspected he already knew what he would find when it opened. If it was the Resurrection Stone, Harry knew that Dumbledore had intended it to be used so that Harry could see his parents and know they were at peace before he joined them. It was a kindness, Harry realized, perhaps the last one Dumbledore would be able to give, but a sudden, mad thought pulsed through Harry that he would use the stone and see Ginny before him.

It was irrational, but he couldn’t drive the thought out. What if all he’d done, all he’d sacrificed, was for nothing? What if some rogue Death Eater had stolen into the castle despite Voldemort’s command and had taken Ginny’s life?

Harry’s grip on the snitch tightened until his knuckles were white and his palm burned.

No, he thought. No, she was alive. He couldn’t give into fear, not when he was so close to seeing this through. The fear of death was Voldemort’s weakness, and Harry couldn’t allow it to be his as well.

With a deep breath, Harry closed his eyes, and as he brought the snitch to his lips, he thought of his last truly happy day… the afternoon before he left on that final, fateful trip with Dumbledore to the cave by the sea… the last day he was with Ginny as her boyfriend… the last day he could for a brief time forget the prophecy that bound him to Lord Voldemort…

* * *

Harry was very pleased with himself. In fact, he wondered why he hadn’t snuck out of dinner sooner to rendevouz with Ginny behind the tapestry leading to the not-so-secret secret passage shortcut from the Great Hall to the Gryffindor common room. Sure, there was an element of risk to it. This was more or less a public space, but no clothes had been shed (yet, whispered a part of Harry that he found harder and harder to silence the more stolen moments he had with Ginny) and besides it was a _rarely-used_-not-very-secret-passage anyway.

And anyway, just the undeniable truth that Ginny Weasley was his girlfriend, and that they were becoming more and more intimate by the second, sent a powerful surge of excitement through him whenever he thought about it. The thrill of making out with her where they might be caught—and they would be if they didn’t start being quieter very soon, a distant portion of Harry’s mind thought before it was silenced by Ginny’s fingers tightening in his hair—definitely added something to the whole experience. He hadn’t ever really thought he would be one to possess an exhibitionistic streak, but the heady feeling of risk made him feel free and powerful and uncontrolled. 

When he’d told Ginny about it, she joked that his years of being Voldemort’s target had made him into something of a danger junkie… and then proceeded to kiss and grope him for all he was worth outside of the Herbology greenhouses while a group of fourth years were dutifully learning the proper care and feeding of Professor Sprout’s latest batch of mandrakes.

Harry had required a very cold shower after that.

“What am I going to do with you, Potter?” Ginny whispered in his ear, her warm breath causing a hitch in his breathing and a brief pause in the kisses he was happily, dutifully applying to the portion of her neck that met at the edge of her jaw and the lobe of her ear. “Oh, you like that, do you?” she purred as her grip tightened in her hair.

Harry’s almost stopped to answer that yes, he _very much liked that thank you_ before it occurred to him that the best response was to demonstrate just how much he in fact liked it, so he threaded his own hand into Ginny’s bright red hair which fascinated him so much of late that he found himself losing significant portions of time imagining it draped over her face, flying back and forth as she straddled him.

He pulled her as close as possible while carefully keeping a strong grip where Ginny’s hair met the base of her neck… and then he pulled. Hard. 

Harry had made the wonderful discovery quite by accident the past week that pulling Ginny’s hair transformed his sweet, funny, snarky girlfriend into something dark-eyed and primal and totally focused on making Harry painfully aroused before breaking things off for the evening. 

Not that he resented her for the ‘leaving him painfully aroused’ part. If she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t ready, and while parts of Harry were more than ready, he also wasn’t sure if he was ready to go all the way either. At least that’s what he kept telling himself.

Besides, driving those urges away was what Quidditch practice in the cold rain was for.

The pull had the desired effect, drawing out a hiss from his girlfriend that quickly turned into a keening cry of his name, and Harry wondered if this was when they were going to pass the point of no return because if he was reading his signals right, then Ginny wanted this as much as he did.

Although as he moved his free hand to Ginny’s waist before sliding it up under her shirt and along the smooth, hot skin of her back, Harry wondered why he ever felt reluctance in the first place. This was where he belonged, and this was what he should be devoting his time to doing. Any thought that now might be the time to stop evaporated as his entire world became a quest to get as much of her as close to him as physically possible. To his delight, that seemed to be Ginny’s response as well as she practically melted against him, her breaths short and stuttery and her cry turned into desperate, soft whimpers and Harry knew that line which couldn’t be uncrossed was well and truly crossed…

And that was, of course, the moment that fate once again decided Harry Potter was enjoying himself far too much for its liking. In his darker moments, Harry thought that Fate and Professor Snape must have regular appointments to discuss Harry and how best to ruin his life.

Today, Fate took the form of a particular Gryffindor prefect named Hermione Granger, who ripped aside the tapestry concealing Harry and Ginny just as he had pressed her against the wall, spreading Ginny’s hips just enough to grant him enough space to press himself against her in a way that couldn’t be explained as anything other than exactly what it looked like. 

“What on earth are you two doing?!” Hermione asked, voice rising in both decibel level and shrillness with each syllable. It was in truth an unnecessary question since the answer was quite obvious, and a clever girl like Hermione Granger should have been able to figure out exactly what was happening without prompting from the couple in question.

Harry felt it was to his credit that he moved faster than he’d ever done without Apparating as he twisted himself around to keep as much of Ginny hidden from sight as possible, although from the look on Hermione’s face—and the faces of a dozen or so of their fellow Gryffindor students, behind her including Ginny’s brother and Harry’s possibly now former best mate, Ron—he wasn’t as successful in concealing Ginny as he might have hoped.

_Oh, and of course_, Harry thought. Ginny’s ex, Dean, was there too, looking murderous.

It was ironic, really. Ron looked put out and annoyed. He had a terribly depressing habit of happening upon Harry and Ginny during intimate moments. Harry wasn’t sure whether he or Ron felt worse about it. The first dozen or so times, Ron had had heated words with Ginny and had given Harry a murderous glare very similar to the one Harry was now receiving from Dean. Harry, for his part, had endured those glares from Ron, because Ginny was Ron’s baby sister and Harry understood him feeling protective of Ginny. He truly did.

Ron had that privilege. It was not one that Harry was willing to extend to Dean Thomas, and Harry felt torn between the urge to kiss Ginny within an inch of her life in front of the prat and an impulse to hex him right into the hospital wing. 

Dean’s hypocrisy burned in Harry’s mind. Hadn’t Harry been forced to watch for nearly this whole year while Dean tried to devour Ginny Weasley’s face during their public makeout sessions?

In fact, Harry decided. What Dean had done didn’t even really qualify as kissing. It was… Well, it was something bad and disgraceful and made Dean totally unqualified to judge Harry.

Before Harry could tell Dean just where he could take his judgemental arse and what he could do once he got there, Hermione’s outrage meter hit its breaking point.

“This is…” she sputtered and stopped, seeming unsure of how to sufficiently scold the amorous couple without risking a self-induced stroke. “You are…” Her face turned a worrying shade of scarlet as she shouted, “Have you two lost your minds?!”

Ron glowered beside her. “Seriously, Harry, I don’t know how much more of this I can take, and don’t tell me you wouldn’t say the same thing to me, Ginny, if it was you catching me and some girl. Why can’t the two of you find some empty classroom with a door that locks?”

Hermione twisted to face Ron so fast that Harry worried she might injure her spine. 

“That’s your solution, Ronald? You are a _prefect_!” she hissed, emphasizing the word “prefect” with the same intensity a Death Eater would the killing curse, perhaps more. In fact, her utterance of the word was so powerful, every student besides Hermione, Ron, and—to Harry’s great dismay—Dean fled immediately.

Behind Harry, Ginny snorted in amusement, which had the unfortunate effect of redirecting both Hermione’s rage back to them and turning Ron’s sour exasperation into actual anger.

Those things, Harry could live with. He was already used to the idea of being judged by Ron—and the reasonable part of him knew Ron had a point about the couple’s lack of discretion—and Hermione was… Hermione. In other words, she was for all intents and purposes, Harry’s adopted sister, and she was responsible for wrangling all the rowdy Gryffindors into a passable semblance of students. Harry honestly felt sympathy for her and likely would have taken her anger to heart if Dean wasn’t standing there looking hurt and angry.

Ginny crossed her arms and gave Dean a challenging look as she stepped from behind Harry. “Stop looking like a kicked puppy, Dean,” she said. “Just last night you had your tongue halfway down Lavender’s throat, so you have no right to judge.”

Immediately, Dean’s expression instantly went from outrage to guilt, and he mumbled something Harry was pretty sure was an apology as he quickly made his own exit, trailing after the other retreating Gryffindor students.

Harry grinned at his girlfriend. “Have I ever told you you’re brilliant?”

“Not often enough,” Ginny replied with her own grin.

“I love you,” Harry said… and immediately realized just what he’d said and cursed himself. This wasn’t the right place or the right time for that kind of confession. He had known the depth of his feelings for Ginny for a while now, but he’d wanted to sound out Ginny’s feelings first.

As it was, she looked like he’d hit her with an especially powerful and effective _Stupify_.

He assumed that Ron and Hermione were equally shocked, as neither of them said a word, but Harry was so focused on Ginny that he didn’t—_couldn’t_—tear his eyes away from her.

With a timidity that Harry found worrisome, Ginny took Harry’s hands in hers, and he thought his heart might break because she was trembling and that couldn’t be a good sign.

He braced himself for the worst. She was going to tell him she loved him as a friend and maybe he was a great kisser but she wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment what with ruddy Voldemort lurking around every bloody corner.

“I love you, too, Harry Potter,” Ginny whispered, eyes shiny like she might cry, and Harry idly thought he might too despite how embarrassing it might be.

Ginny freed one hand from Harry’s and made to pull the tapestry back over them, but she was stopped by Hermione gripping the tapestry as well.

“No!” Hermione barked, startling the couple so much they jumped back from each other and once again faced the angry witch. “I’m honestly so happy for you that just this once I’m not giving you both detention, but you will not have _relations_ in a hallway. Do you understand me?”

Ron nodded along with Hermione’s words. 

“I’m happy for you, too,” he said, surprising all three of them. “What? I am!” he protested. “Look, Harry, you’re my best mate and the best bloke I’ve ever known, and that’s exactly the kind of guy my baby sister deserves, and same for you, Ginny, but in reverse. Harry’s been through a lot in his life, and he deserves someone great like you.”

Ron paused and took a deep breath. “And both of you deserve better than… well, this,” he continued waving vaguely at the hallway. “You make each other happy, so things should be… special.”

He had seemingly run out of words, so he shrugged and looked away, embarrassed. 

Hermione blinked at Ron. “That was,” she started and paused, unsure of how to continue. “That was poignant, Ron,” she finally said.

That brought out another shrug, and Ron replied, “I have my moments.”

Hermione must have decided to puzzle that out later because she turned on Harry and Ginny.

“You two,” she commanded. “Common room, now. And Harry, I’m confiscating your cloak.”

“What?” Harry protested. 

“You’ll get it back when you get your hormones under control,” Hermione declared, eyes narrowed at him to the point he was sure she couldn’t see anything. “And Ginny, if you try to nick it, I’ll write your mother.”

Both Harry and Ginny blanched.

“You wouldn’t,” Ginny protested.

“Try me,” Hermione warned in a tone that left no doubt she meant every word.

With that in mind, Harry took Ginny’s hand as they very chastely walked back to the common room under the watchful eyes of Ron and Hermione. For the rest of the evening, they cuddled in a most chaste manner as Hermione refused to let them out of her sight.

* * *

As the Resurrection Stone dropped into Harry’s hand, he smiled. He was still terrified of his impending death, but he had at least had those few sunlit days with Ginny Weasley when he could forget about dark wizards and prophecies and just be a boy in love with a girl who loved him back.

He turned the Stone in his hand and his heart wrenched as he saw his parents and Sirius and Remus. Briefly, he considered talking about Ginny with them, but they assured him they were always with him, so they must know. That, of course, led to a brief moment of discomfort as he hoped against hope that they didn’t mean _all_ the time, especially times behind tapestries.

Soon enough, Harry stood and faced Voldemort for what he knew would be the last time, but he had three things that gave him comfort. First and likely least important, the Elder Wand didn’t really belong to Tom, so he’d never be able to truly master it. Beyond that, though, Harry knew he had the love of the family he’d just seen through the power of the Resurrection Stone.

Harry closed his eyes and as the green light washed over him and he felt his life slip away, he felt peace, not fear as he focused on the third thing… that most important thing… the one thing which had truly given him the courage to come here and face Voldemort.

Ginny Weasley loved him, and he loved her with all of his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I've always had a soft spot for this pairing and I thought it would be fun to participate in a call for fiction in celebration of the two characters' birthdays after stumbling upon it. The prompt is entitled Several Sunlit Days. 
> 
> Each challenge had a twist offered up at random. The twist for me was the reactions of Ron and Dean after Harry and Ginny were caught behind a tapestry. 
> 
> I had a lot of fun writing this and I hope you enjoyed reading!


End file.
